Re: second floor ; smoking
"You're not fond of terms of endearment?" she asked, turning his literal interpretation into something much more pleasing. "Would you rather something more direct?" she questioned, the grayish tint to her skin doing little to hide the pleasure she found in the simple act of bantering. "I like direct, even if it does make me sound small and simple. I like things that sound like caring even more." Being grown was something no woman in her line of work owned to. Grown meant being cast as mother or aunt, and she thought she was still ages away from those days that were never destined to come. "Being grown is fine once you get there, but I have a ways to go yet, wouldn't you say?" she asked him. "How old are you beneath that chivalrous draping of red and white? A lady never tells, but I don't believe men share that compunction."
Nephritis turned her face up when he declared that some man loved her, and she laughed bells and dirges, the sound a husky clink on a voice that was already beginning to show the hoarse rasp of dying. It was a small thing, less noticeable than the ammonia peeking from beneath the dead roses on her breath. "I do just fine," she admitted of suitors and fans that thought they knew the girl inside the goddess. "But doing just fine isn't the kind of love that tucks you in nights and can't wait to see your eyes open in the morning. Stepping out with a man isn't at all the same. Stepping out is about acting." She graced him with a smile that was sunrise, before the makeup went on a dulled her into something beautiful. "Dying for love sounds like something for the screen. I want it out here, in the real world, where I can feel it beneath my fingertips." The fingers on his arms squeezed weakly as an example. "It doesn't have to be fit for the screen. It just has to be mine." She smiled, tease and endings. "Do you feel differently?"
She glanced out when the doors opened, and then she looked back at him, as if the doors would patiently wait for the clink of her heels. "Grazie tanto," she offered, thankful when he said she wasn't spoiling his evening. Whether it was true or not, she chose to believe it. She took a long step that didn't falter, though the her breathing became more shallow with the tiring procession into the welcoming room. "I'd love a cigarette," she said. "It's a nasty habit," she admitted without apology, even as she extended her hand for the back of the first chair they encountered. "I ought to quit. Everyone tells me so." She dropped into the chair with poise, an ornament in the smoky room, her legs tucked to her side. She let go of his arm at the very last possible instant, and she gestured toward the chair across from her. "Will join me for a drink?" she asked hopefully. "I'd love to hear who you need freedom from." She looked around the smoky room. "We're all free here, aren't we?" She draped her wrist over the arm of the chair.